


Between a Rock and a Hard Place

by Aerlalaith



Category: Star Trek, Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies), Star Trek: The Original Series
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Human, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Dogs, Fluff and Crack, Fluff and Humor, I Don't Even Know, Injury, M/M, McCoy is a saint, Moonshine, Professor Spock, Rancher Kirk, rocks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-09
Updated: 2015-08-09
Packaged: 2018-04-13 18:21:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,061
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4532421
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aerlalaith/pseuds/Aerlalaith
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jim Kirk is a rancher. Spock is the geologist who keeps stealing rocks off his property.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Between a Rock and a Hard Place

There was something wrong with the wall. Jim Kirk crouched down, boots crunching in the dirt as he leaned to peer at it. He blinked, frowning, then sat back on his heels.  
   
Yes, there were definitely holes there. Big ones. Stone-sized ones, actually.  
   
Just to make sure he wasn’t crazy, Jim scrabbled over to the other side to see that nothing had, for example, fallen through and smashed. But no, the back was just as rocky and covered in scrub-brush as the front. And there were no signs of missing pieces of wall either.  
   
So the question remained: who the hell would steal bits of a fucking wall?  
   
Jim pursed his lips. _Kids_ , he decided. _Drunk kids_. And to be fair, Jim figured that as a stupid teenager hopped up on his mama’s beer, he probably would have done something similar at one point. Jim sighed, rubbing his forehead. He placed his hat back on his head and leaned against the structure.  
   
Well, if it was kids, it was probably a one-time thing, like a stupid dare. With a shrug, he headed back towards his truck and climbed into it, gunning the ignition. At least they hadn’t tried to steal anything with actual value, Jim consoled himself. He could go down to the quarry some time this week and patch it right up. No problem.

   
#

   
There was a problem.  
   
“What the _fuck_?” Jim swore. He got out of the truck, jaw hanging. What not two days ago had been a beautifully patched barrier between his property and the Bureau of Land Management’s, was now not just missing a few pieces here and there, but was literally riddled with holes.  
   
Jim took a deep breath, held it, then exhaled, counting to three. There were footprints, he noticed. Boot prints, really, trampled all around. But that didn’t mean much. Hell, they could’ve been _his_ prints. They were about the same size, anyway.  
   
The dog, who he’d taken on a whim this time round, sniffed at the wall, then sat at his feet, tongue lolling out in the midsummer Utah heat.  
   
“Well?” he asked her. He pointed at the wall. “What the hell is this? Fucking gnomes?”  
   
The dog, of course, didn’t answer, but Jim felt like that was answer enough.  
   
“Right,” he said. “Come on.” As he turned on his heel, he stopped, then spun back around. “Next time I’m bringing the Rottweiler!” he shouted at the juniper bushes. A flock of mourning doves took off in alarm. “And the shotgun!”  
   
He looked down at the dog, who tilted her head at him and whined. “Sorry,” he said, “You look too much like a Labrador to be scary. Junior’s tagging along next time.”  
   
The dog barked.  
 

#  
   
   
“Bones, what do you know about gnomes?” Jim said. He spun the phone cord around his fingers. There was a long pause on the other end of the line.  
   
“Jim, you haven’t been making moonshine in the bathtub again, have you?”  
   
“No!” Jim hissed. He cast a slightly guilty look in the direction of the bathroom, but just said. “I’m serious, man. Someone’s been stealing pieces of wall off my property. It’s happened twice now!”  
   
“And your first guess was gnomes,” McCoy said flatly.  
   
“Well,” Jim hedged. “What the hell else would it be?”  
   
“I dunno, Jim. Kids, maybe? Those BLM guys playing pranks on you again? Not _gnomes_ , Jesus Christ.”  
   
But Jim shook his head. “No, Bones,” he said. “You have to come see this.”  
   
“I’m busy! Some of us actually have work to do.”  
   
“ _Bones_.”  
   
Fourteen hours, later, Dr. Leonard McCoy stood next to Jim Kirk, hands on his hips, staring at the wall. Finally, he tilted his face up to look at Jim’s.  
   
“Gnomes,” he said. “Definitely.”  
 

#

   
Despite the fact that it was almost certainly going to be defaced _yet again_ , in the meantime the wall was structurally unsound and had to be fixed. Unfortunately, it was a Sunday, so all his ranch hands had gone into town. But, Jim reasoned, here he was, here his excellent friend, the good doctor was…  
   
“I hate you,” McCoy grunted, dropping a pile of newly quarried rock into the flatbed of Jim’s truck. “There’s a reason I went to medical school and it weren’t to do hard labor.”  
   
“I thought exercise was good for you?”  
   
“No, it’s good for _you_.” McCoy rubbed at his lower back. “It’s downright lethal for me.”  
   
“I think you’re exaggerating.”  
   
“I think you ought to invest in a security system so you don’t have to put me through this again.”  
   
“There, that should be enough.” Jim dumped the rest of his armful into the truck as well. He was just about to swing around and climb back behind the wheel, when he noticed something out of place. He bent down. “Hey, Bones,” he said, picking up a red bandanna smashed into the dust next to the back wheel, “this yours?”  
   
McCoy raised an eyebrow. “Do I look like I’d wear a bandana?”  
   
Jim frowned. “Huh. You don’t think…?”  
   
They both turned to eye the wall of the quarry.  
   
“Think maybe your gnomes have moved on to bigger and better things?”  
   
“Huh,” Jim said. “Huh.”  
   
McCoy rolled his eyes.  
 

#

   
Despite McCoy’s grumbling, the wall was rebuilt without incident. In an attempt to catch his thief, Jim then spent an entire day crouched in the shadow of a juniper bush nearby, waiting. His results were less than he’d hoped however; all he really got out of it was some prickly pear to the wrist. And in fact, the wall showed absolutely no signs of being tampered with for the entirety of the week.  
   
“Maybe they got tired of my stuff and went to go bother someone else,” Jim theorized over ritual Friday night burgers. “What do you think?”  
   
“I think you’re due for that follow-up appointment you promised me,” McCoy said. He sneered at Jim’s burger. “If you want your numbers to be better this time, you’ve got to stop eating crap like that.”  
   
Jim gave him a hangdog look, then stuffed the rest of the burger into his mouth.  
   
“It’s like I’m talking to a monkey,” McCoy muttered, covering his eyes with his hand.  
   
“We’ve missed a few spots though.” Jim swallowed, wiping ketchup off his face with a napkin. “I have to go back to the quarry tomorrow to get a few more pieces.”  
   
“Why don’t you just use barbed wire or something? Then you wouldn’t have to keep going back and forth.”  
   
Jim shrugged. “I like the stones,” he said. He gently nibbled at a French-fry. “Makes it look traditional. Rustic.”  
   
McCoy shook his head. “I will never understand you.”  
   
“Will you be around tomorrow?” Jim slurped the last of his soda and leaned back, hands on his stomach. The plastic on the red booth squeaked at he shifted.  
   
“No, sorry. I’m on call all day.”  
   
“No rest for the wicked, huh?”  
   
McCoy stole a fry off of Jim’s plate. “You watch your mouth, boy.”  
   
Jim grinned. Then he noticed the fry in McCoy’s hands. “Hey!” he said, stretching forward, “I was going to get those boxed up.” He pouted as McCoy made a thoroughly disgusted face at him.  
   
“Well, good. I’m saving you from eating cold French fries.” He took another one. “You’re welcome, Jim,” he said pointedly.  
   
Jim crossed his arms. “Well, clearly I don’t need enemies with friends like you!” he said.  
   
“That’s what I’m here for.” McCoy nodded. “That’s what I’m here for.”  
 

#

   
Saturday morning was hot and cloudless when Jim took off for the quarry. He took the dog (not Junior. Junior looked scary but he was blind as a bat and nearly deaf to boot), and she stuck her head out the window the whole twenty minutes, tongue flapping in the wind.  
   
When he arrived, everything looked absolutely normal. In retrospect, this should have tipped him off.    
   
The dog noticed the intruder first. She began to bark. Sharp, high pitched noises that grated on the ears. Startled, Jim glanced towards the rim of the quarry, where red sandstone met blue sky, and saw the silhouette of a man.  
   
“Hey!” Jim shouted. “Hey, you!”  
   
Clearly surprised, the man turned around. As he did, a rock slid out from beneath his feet. He stuck his hands out for balance, wobbled, and then tripped backwards as the entirety of the ledge beneath him crumbled in a hail of rock and mud. In less than a moment, the entire avalanche had come clattering down the steep slope of the quarry, dust rising above it, the man battered and bruised in its midst until it finally came to rest at Jim’s feet.  
   
The man was wearing a brand new red bandana around his neck.  
   
“Oh,” Jim said. “Oh, shit.”  
 

#  
 

The man’s name was Spock.  
   
“I apologize for trespassing,” he said, now sitting on Jim’s couch, holding the ice packet to his knee. Junior leaned against his other leg, drooling. “I thought, well. You’re _right_ next to BLM land. I must have miscalculated.”  
   
He did look very sorry, Jim thought, although that might’ve just been the swollen lip. Regardless, Spock had very nice cheekbones, so Jim said,  
   
“It’s no problem. I mean, yeah. It _was_ a bit of a problem when you kept taking pieces out of my wall, but. I don’t mind if you go to the quarry. Just, uh. Make sure to ask permission next time.”  
   
Spock was silent for a moment. Then he said, eyebrows drawing together, “That was a _wall_?”  
   
Jim might have glared a little. “Yes. That was a _wall_. My wall, to be exact. On my property line.”  
   
“Ah.” Now Spock shrunk inward a little, though he kept patting Junior’s head, despite the cumbersome bandaging on his wrist. “I see. That’s where I must have gone wrong. I was expecting perhaps, barbed wire to indicate the property line.”  
   
Jim sighed. “What were you looking for, anyway? Dinosaur bones?” He perked up at the thought. “Hey, if you find dinosaur bones on my property, does that mean I get to keep them?”  
   
“I’m sorry.” Spock shook his head. His long fingers tapped a rhythm onto his uninjured leg. “I was looking at section from the Devonian. You would need material from the Triassic, at the very least.”  
   
“Oh.” Jim coughed.  
   
The fan above them creaked rhythmically as they sat in silence for a moment. Spock looked remarkably calm for someone who nearly died an hour ago, Jim thought. Maybe he was into meditation. He looked like the type.  
   
Spock wiped at his forehead, and a line of dirt appeared on his arm. Though his expression didn’t actually change, he looked, somehow, very disappointed.  
   
Jim sighed. He jerked his thumb in the direction of the hallway. “Hey, uh. If you want to clean up those cuts some more, feel free to use my bathroom. Then I can give you a lift to your car. You shouldn’t be walking on that knee.”  
   
Spock’s face fell a little more, this time noticeably. He fiddled with the red bandana, undoing the knots in it, and sticking it into the pocket of his jeans.  
   
“I am aware,” he said. He got to his feet, wincing a little, then staggered gracelessly towards the bathroom, using the wall as a crutch. He looked down at his knee accusingly. “This will make fieldwork very difficult.”  
   
“Yeah, sorry about that,” Jim told him again. Damn, why did he feel so guilty? Spock had been the one trespassing. Then he remembered something. “Oh, and Spock?”  
   
“Yes?”  
   
“If you want to take a shower or something, there’s towels. But use the one upstairs. The bathtub down here has beer in it.”  
   
Spock blinked at him.  
 

#

   
**Day one:**  
   
It was only fair, Jim thought. It was his property, so he had every right to see what Spock did to his quarry.  
   
He did clean up very nicely, Jim mused, watching as Spock limped his way towards the quarry wall, hammer in hand. The jeans in particular were exceptional. Especially in the back.  
   
**Day two:**  
   
“Mr. Kirk, I realize that you are doing me a favor by allowing access to your land. However, it is extremely difficult to concentrate while you do that.”  
   
Jim dropped the rubber ball guiltily. “My bad,” he said, rubbing the back of his neck. The dog nudged the ball, then sat back on her haunches, tail wagging gently. When Jim ignored her, she whined, then went to lay down next to Spock, putting her head on his uninjured knee. Spock reached out absently to kneed behind her ears.  
   
“Traitor,” Jim muttered.  
   
**Day three:**  
   
“What is the dog’s name?”  
   
“Junior.”  
   
“Both of your dogs are named ‘Junior’?” Spock stared at him from under the brim of his bucket hat, a little cross-eyed. Jim kind of wanted to pull his hat off and muss up his hair.  
   
“Oh,” he said instead, looking over to the black lab that had accompanied them on every excursion. “She’s Lacy.”  
   
“Lacy?”  
   
Spock, if possible, seemed even more confused.  
   
“What?” Jim said defensively. “She liked it.”  
   
Spock stared at him.  
   
“Next time I’ll go with Killer,” Jim huffed, turning away.  
   
**Day five:**  
   
“Hey, Spock. Is this a fossil?”  
   
“No.”  
   
“Oh. What about this one?”  
   
“No.”  
   
What about this?”  
   
“No—wait. Bring that back.”  
   
**Day Seven:**  
   
“Is this the one you wanted?” Jim puffed. He dropped it at Spock’s feet, stretching and rotating his arms to ease the ache in his back and shoulders. Spock smiled that barely-there half smile.  
   
“Yes,” he said. “Thank you, Jim.” He peered down to study it, hand lens at the ready. Jim bent down as well.  
   
“Anything good?”  
   
“It’s a very good example of a death assemblage.” Spock pressed his lips together, then nodded. “I think I will take this one for my students, if that is acceptable to you?”  
   
“Of course.” Jim grinned, clapping Spock on the back. “Tell me about it.”  
   
Spock tilted his head. “Well,” he said. “These are all jumbled pieces of trilobite, mostly. I say it’s a death assemblage because there are so many of them, none of them whole.” He pointed at the pieces as he spoke. “They were probably brought together by a current, and were buried then.”  
   
Jim realized that they were nearly nose-to-nose. He didn’t step back. “That’s very insightful of you, Professor,” he said. His voice was low and kind of hoarse, like he needed to drink some water.  
   
“It’s my job,” Spock returned. He didn’t move back either, nor did he look at the fossil again, though his fingers clenched on it. His gaze flickered briefly to Jim’s mouth. Jim licked his lips.  
   
Their eyes locked. Spock’s were brown, Jim noticed. Very, very brown. “Your students must be very lucky to have you.”  
   
Spock swallowed. “Some are more…receptive than others.”  
   
“I can understand that.” Jim crouched, their knees nearly touching now. “Do you think I’d make a good student?” He grinned, letting the next word ease from between his teeth. “ _Professor_?”  
   
In response, Spock clamped his hand around the back of Jim’s neck and tugged him into a kiss. With a pleased groan, Jim plucked Spock’s hat off his head, and buried his hands in Spock’s hair.  
   
After a moment, they separated, staring at each other. Spock’s eyes were wide, his cheeks flushed, and his hair a complete mess. Jim’s lips were swollen. His tongue snaked out.  
   
“Well, Professor?” he asked, cocking his head. “What’s your verdict?”  
   
Spock’s eyebrow shot up. “I think more data is needed,” he said. And yanked Jim back down again.  
 

#  
 

“So this is your gnome,” McCoy said, entering the waiting room of the clinic. He crossed his arms, looking Spock up and down. “He doesn’t look much like a gnome.”  
   
“I beg your pardon?” Spock said flatly.  
   
Jim cleared his throat, ears reddening. “Yes, um. Dr. Leonard McCoy, this is Dr. Spock Grayson. He’s a geologist out of Salt Lake City.”  
   
“You know, Jim thought you were gnomes,” McCoy told Spock, shaking his hand.  
   
“That makes absolutely no sense,” Spock said, frowning.  
   
“For god’s sake, would you just look at his knee?”  
   
McCoy cast his eyes heavenward. “Hold your horses, I’ll get to it.” He nodded his thanks as Spock rolled up his pants for him. “And this is from a week ago?”  
   
“About, yes.” Spock winced as McCoy prodded it.  
   
“And Jim, why didn’t you bring him to me immediately?” McCoy’s voice was deceptively calm. Jim gulped.  
   
“Um,” he said.  
   
“Work,” Spock said, very serenely.  
   
“You’re both idiots,” McCoy growled. He stood up again. “Well, I don’t think you broke anything, but you should probably get an x-ray just in case, since it’s still hurting. In the meantime, stay off of it. No rock climbing.”  
   
Spock inclined his head. “Very well. Thank you, Doctor.”  
   
“My pleasure,” McCoy said, in a way that made it very clear that it absolutely wasn’t. Spock didn’t seem to notice though, or maybe he just didn’t care. He got to his feet, favoring his right leg.  
   
“Well, we’re off.” Jim looked kind of twitchy, he scratched at his neck. McCoy narrowed his eyes at him.  
   
“Oh really? And what’s so important that you have to…” he trailed off, noticing just what, exactly, Jim had hidden under his collar. He slapped his forehead. “Oh, for god’s sake, Jim.”  
   
This time, Jim’s whole face turned red. “Hey,” he protested. “I didn’t _ask_ him to give me a giant hickey.”  
   
“It’s true,” Spock said, turning back around before McCoy even had time to wonder just who the hell _he_ was. “He didn’t ask.”  
   
McCoy glanced back and forth between them, his eyes widening as he clicked the pieces together. Finally he turned to Jim. “You just met a week ago!”  
   
Jim shrugged. “Nature is very stimulating. We bonded.”  
   
“Indeed,” Spock agreed.  
   
McCoy massaged his temples. “I don’t want to know,” he declared. “Just, get out of my clinic.” He pointed at Spock. “And stay off that knee!”  
   
“Come on, Spock,” Jim said, grinning. “Since you’re forbidden from going back out in the field, we’ll have to find something else for you to do.”  
   
Spock’s eyes glinted. “I will place myself in your capable hands.”  
   
After they had showed themselves out, McCoy sunk into one of the chairs. He rubbed at his forhead. “Would’ve been better if it were gnomes,” he muttered, and wished for a drink.  
   



End file.
